1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network relay device and a memory control method, and more particularly to a power-saving network relay device and a memory control method for reducing the power consumption of the network relay device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A network relay device such as a switch or router is important in configuring a network. In recent years, with the larger-scale network and the increasing amount of data transmitted via the network, the higher performance and larger capacity of the network relay device are remarkable. On the other hand, with the higher performance and larger capacity, the power consumption of the network relay device tends to increase, and from the viewpoint of system maintenance cost or environmental protection, it is a problem to suppress the power consumption of the network relay device.
Herein, there was disclosed a technology for a buffer management method for making a cell transfer efficiently in an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switchboard (e.g., refer to JP-A-2002-247081). In this patent, the accumulated number of cells in a queue provided for each of one or more service classes for a cell is determined in making the cell transfer using a common buffer. And the accumulated number of cells is compared with a threshold preset for the queue, the threshold is dynamically changed depending on the result, and the cell is accumulated in the common buffer based on the changed threshold, thereby providing a buffer management method for making the cell transfer efficiently.